My England: Dan Cruickshank
The architectural historian and conservation warrior shares his thoughts on his treasured home and love of London
IWAS born in London and I’ve always ended up living in Georgian houses, weirdly enough. In the late 1970s, I got involved in saving the remaining neglected early Georgian buildings of Spitalfields and squatted in a house to stop the demolition. Those were the days! We didn’t think we could save the buildings, but thought we could make a noise and stop other buildings being demolished. Extraordinarily enough it was successful in the end. I bought my house, which I started repairing then (and am still repairing now) in the same street.
It’s a funny thing, life. When we were occupying these houses it was winter. The guys who turned up to prepare the buildings for demolition were the most charming men. One guy had been demolishing London buildings since the 1930s. But they gave us lots of firewood and told us even they wanted the buildings to be saved.
Spitalfields was regarded as distant and dangerous back then. It’s only 10 minutes’ walk from St Paul’s Cathedral. In my late teens I was almost fatally attracted by the fact it was overlooked and seemed to be utterly doomed at any moment. It’s compelling stuff. It makes you want to fight, makes you want to cry and there’s a real kind of thrill.
I have this vast collection of photographs that I’ve never properly catalogued. I’ve got to do it before I lose my memory! You can fight for buildings and often not win, but if you take photographs they at least have some life after death. I have a 35mm Nikkormat and it’s a good lens.
People forget why the conservation movement got going in the early 70s. There was so much destruction, street upon street, not only Spitalfields, but places like Marylebone and Chelsea, boarded up and derelict. I have a picture in my collection of this wonderful house off Fleet Street. I used to pop in to Racquet Court to enjoy it and one day it had been
demolished. That’s what happened all the time then. A late 17th-century house, wonderful panelling, wonderful staircase, just being trashed.
Listing buildings doesn’t mean anything if there isn’t the will to save them, and often the people who should do that – local authorities – don’t. Buildings are safer now, but you can never rest – the battles are over but the war is not. By my age one finds oneself fighting some battles repeatedly to save buildings. Poor old South Kensington Station for example, a lovely listed station, is currently at risk of being swept away for a gruesome, high-rise development. I thought, “Oh my God, nothing ever bloody changes.”
Many individuals care passionately and put a lot of time and energy into fighting for buildings, even though they have no interest in a material sense. It’s quite a British thing, I suppose – the power, the passion of voluntary groups.
There are parts of London which have big, emblematic stories to tell. I’ve just finished a book on Chelsea from Roman times to today. When one thinks of Chelsea, one thinks of it being an artists’ community in the late 19th century with Whistler and Ruskin, Oscar Wilde and the Bohemian lifestyle. Before that, certainly from Roman times, there was a wharf there and it was probably chalk and lime which is where the name “Chelsea” comes from. It then becomes this whole palatial quarter, Henry VIII built a palace there, and the story of it as a village of palaces is amazing.
Any city has a distinct character and you want to see that character maintained, not diluted by alien developments. Build on their character because this is what one loves.
My earliest interests in architecture are from when my father took me to castles and churches. I got very emotionally involved with simple buildings, too: works of art that haven’t been created self-consciously as artistic statements. Country houses are partly that, obviously, private capital showcasing one’s taste and one’s power – fair enough. But it’s humble buildings and the beauty that lurks in the modest street that has always intrigued me.
England wouldn’t be England without its gardens: places such as Stourhead and Stowe. These are things that are important, and if they hadn’t happened the world would be less, culturally. There are many other things, of course, like the diversity of Britain’s natural landscape.
I like to watch documentaries on the natural world more than anything else and often click away at my computer listening to Handel.
What do I admire most in others? Obviously you can say honesty and directness, but does one really mean that or do you just want people to be kind and lie? I would like to say honesty and truth – only with a certain amount of gentleness, please. We’re all fragile, aren’t we?
My house in its entirety is my most treasured possession. I’m buried under lots of architectural salvage. I have gigantic pilasters from buildings in Soho which were demolished in the ’70s, and even in front of me is a pile of banisters and some wonderful carved door brackets from Redmans Road off Stepney Green, from some houses I couldn’t save. I’m a hoarder, I guess. Part of doing the house was to repair it and furnish it in a sympathetic manner with 17th- and 18th-century furniture that could have been here when the house was built. I’ve created a personal world which, if you tore it away from me, I’d find very painful.
If I could invite anyone to dinner from the past it would be great to meet Walpole or literary figures like Samuel Johnson. But as my feeling is for ordinary works of art, I’d like to meet some artisan craftsman. Many were unlettered guys, but had an erudition and a skill in the panelling, the cornices, the brickwork. These people are anonymous and humble, but what they created wasn’t because we appreciate their creations to this day. Where did they get their knowledge from, their inspiration, their poetry? What did they talk about? They must have spoken about their creative decisions down in the tavern; it wouldn’t all have been about cock fights!
Life in an English Country House, published some years ago, by Mark Girouard, is beautifully written. Mark talks about the forces behind the creation of the thing you’re appreciating – the life that created it, the life sustained by it. Many traditional books are just about the architecture we can see. We can appreciate the tangible; it’s the invisible side that’s intriguing.